Five Rookie Real Estate Mistakes You Must Avoid

We share the five biggest mistakes from our early years in real estate and the systems that prevent them now. From termites and fire damage to scripts and title work, we break down exact steps to protect profit, trust, and time.

• starting broke and door knocking pre‑Google
• first deals, lucky wins, and early blind spots
• why education beats noise and hype
• paperwork that protects both investor and seller
• scripts for homeowners, banks, buyers, and contractors
• title companies, clear title, and clean closings
• inspection essentials: termites, fire, water, mold, foundation
• building a local team via RIA and referrals
• protecting margins and saying no to bad buyers
• creating generational wealth with fewer mistakes

One two three fourclosures dot com forward slash goldmine — you invest in that and I will invest in you. Leave a five‑star review, subscribe, and write “Dwan is amazing, wonderful. Her tips are so great.”

Transcript

Welcome To The DWonderful Universe

Dwan Bent-Twyford 1:15

Hey everybody, welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan Bent-Twyford, America's most sought-after real estate investor. If you're not following me yet, go to Dwanderful everywhere. dwanderful.com, dwanderful on Facebook, on threads, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, Dwanderful Everything. I took my name Dwan and Wonderful and I made a new word. So this is the exciting, dwanderful universe. I'm so excited that you are being a part of it today. I have a really great podcast for you today. I'm sitting outside in my backyard in Florida. The house right on the water. There's a little lake leads to the lake where I go paddle boarding. And so I'm hoping the color and everything is good. There's a lot of outside sounds like the wind chimes and lawns being cut and all kinds of stuff like that. So if you hear it, those are the sounds of Florida. So today's podcast is super important to all new investors. We're gonna cover the top five mistakes I made when I first started investing. So as you know, I was a broke single mom. I was fired from Denny's. I had no job skills whatsoever. I was 32 years old when I started. 67 now. So I've been doing it for a cajillion years, it feels like. It's hard to believe. I'm 67. It's like, oh my God, where did the time go? So we're gonna cover the top five mistakes, things I wish I knew before I started investing in real estate. Now, if you've ever heard me tell my story, you know that when my daughter was eight months old, my husband left, and I ended up losing a house and foreclosure, had my car repossessed, credit card bills, up the ginging. It was a really dire time for me. So I had to make a decision on if I was gonna get a job and raise my daughter and put her in daycare care and raise her. And that being 30 years old and suddenly having an eight-month-old child by myself, I thought, you know, because you know, when you're 30, you think people that are 50 or 60 are super old. But then when you get to be 67, you're like, well, 80's not really that old anymore. So your viewpoint about age definitely changed. But I was 30. And I thought, well, if I get a job and put my daughter in daycare, I'm going to have to, I'll be 50 basically, when she's done and out of the house and all of that. And at 30, I thought, gosh, because she's so old, I'll be so old. Like, what will I do? I'll be 50 years old, I'll be an old woman. And then my other thought was well, I could try something on my own, put on my big girl pants, and I could try something on my own and work for myself. So I could raise my daughter myself and never use daycare and never, you know, raise her and teach her and teach her how to read and put her in kindergarten when it's time and all of those things. And I had always dreamed of being like the Girl Scout mom, the cookie mom, the homeroom mom, the field trip mom, have a disco ball in my house, be the disco ball mom, have the fun house, and all those things. That was really important to me. And listen, I'm not hating on anyone that uses daycare. I understand that most of America does it. It takes two incomes to support a family. Kids go to daycare, they go to preschool, they go to kindergarten, and so on. But I really didn't want to do that. I actually waited until I was 30 purposely, so that I could get all my partying ways out of my system, and then I could uh raise my daughter and do all those fun things. So all of my dreams of being a mom were like completely shattered. It's like, okay, now I gotta get a job, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta pay for daycare, I gotta pay for insurance, I gotta pay blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I had met some people and they said we fix up houses and we fix up cars. So I had a couple lunches, had a couple meetings, and they were like, oh, you just have to go down to the county courthouse in Palm Beach County, write down all the foreclosures, use those big maps. So this is pre-Google. Everyone just understand, pre-Google. I am older than Google. And uh you get the addresses, you map them out, and you go door knocking. So that's what I did. I took my baby, I went to the courthouse in Palm Beach County. I at that time nothing was online. Again, pre-Google, nothing was online. All the things that I did are online for you now. So when people say, Oh, Dwan, I can't do it, I'm like, I call bull. I call bull. Everything is at your fingertips. You could sit, I could sit right here on my patio, enjoying the beautiful Florida winter, and get everything I need online with never having to leave this patio. But that wasn't the case. So I listened to what these guys told me. I drove to the county courthouse. I wrote down all the foreclosures. I used those big paper map books. Ugh, I thought those things were gonna be the death of me. And um, and I went and I knocked on doors and I had my baby hanging on my hip, knocking on doors, and I would tell people, I want to buy your house. I see you're in foreclosure, you're losing your house. I want to buy your house. So you can imagine that went over like a lead balloon. I probably knocked on over a hundred doors. Before this woman, Barbara, said, I'll work with you. And I was like, Oh, good. So she was a single mom, I was a single mom. I knew I could get the house, I could fix it up, and I could sell it. So at that time in my life, I thought fixing up meant decorating. So I was like, oh, how hard could this be? These guys, like, they buy houses, they do cars, all the stuff. I just buy it, I fix it up, I sell it, and my daughter's with me every day, and I have a career. So that's it. Honestly, being so naive was probably my best asset. Because if I knew all the things I knew today, I probably would have been scared to actually do it, to be honest with you. I feel like for sure I would have been scared to take such a giant leap because you know, you're selling a house. It's not like I'm selling a car or I'm selling some furniture, I'm selling a house. And a house is a giant thing to sell and wholesale. So I went into it very, very blind. But again, I feel like at that time being blind was my best asset that didn't know what I was getting into. So because I didn't know what I was getting into, I didn't have any fear of failing because I thought, well, how hard could it be to knock on doors, tell someone I can help them out, and I could live in their house and fix it up and we could split the profit. That was my first deal. We'll split the profit. So basically, with the woman that I met, I had a sales contract and she signed it. I signed it just a sales contract, nothing else. And we kind of did a hug and a handshake, and okay, we're gonna help each other out. Now, if one of you came to me and said, Hey, Dwan, I talked to a homeowner, we made a deal based on a hug and a handshake. I'd be like, Are you out of your ever-loving mind? You can't do that. You need paperwork, you need documents, you need to secure that deal. You can't do that. But I was lucky that she found me and she was lucky I found her because we were both honest and we worked together. And I made $22,000 on my first deal, which is nothing to sneeze at. Because back in those days, $22,000 was actually an entire year's salary for people that had good jobs. Like my dad made $18,000 a year back then. So making $22,000 on one deal was a year's worth of money from 99% of the people in the country. So I was like, oh, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm gonna do this again. Then I made 50 grand on the second deal, and then made like 12 on the third deal, and I was like, I'm never doing anything else. I'm doing this forever. And 35 years later, I'm still doing this forever. So uh the good thing is I had the gumption to start. The bad thing is I I was so c I was so clueless. Like it is frightening how clueless I was. So the first big mistake is I didn't have any education. Again, there was no Google, there was no internet, there was no going online, watching webinars, watching workshops, there weren't REIA groups, REIA, real estate investing associations. There weren't REIA groups around the country yet. Like none of those things existed. And I still made it work and I still became super successful. I became a woman in a man's world, and I made it super successful. And now I have spent the last 30 years teaching and training folks just like you, so you can be successful, never make any mistakes, and do all of it exactly the right way with my help and my guidance. So God has placed me in front of you today to tell you some of the things I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know anything. And let's go through them. So the first thing, like I said, was no education. Now, here's the scary thing for folks like you today is everybody's on the internet. So someone could just be a good marketer and have this flashy website with these flashy programs, and you think, oh, I'm gonna spend three or four or five thousand dollars and I'm gonna invest in that. But you can be a good marketer and not be a good trainer. I'm a good trainer, I'm a good coach, I'm a good mentor, I'm gonna take you from whatever level you're at to the sky, to the moon, to the moon and back, wherever you want to go. I can teach you, I can guide you, I can help you, and I can make sure that you get there with no mistakes. Imagine starting a career knowing that you're never gonna make a mistake. I mean, think about the power of knowing you're never going to make a mistake. I mean, I can't even imagine starting off with all the information that you guys have. But you do have to be careful who you work with because not everybody has the morals, not everybody has a moral compass. Some people are just in it for the money, some people are just in it for the money of selling programs, they're not really there to help you or teach you. Or you get and put some giant group coaching, like once every week you're on a call with 500 other people and you never get to ask questions and have someone help you and guide you, which I do. I do, I do do that. So I will work with you every single step of the way. That's one thing you can count on with me. So I started off with no education. My next big mistake is I did not know anything about the paperwork. I actually had a Florida real estate contract, and the guys I knew took the contract and put little X's by the places of things I was supposed to fill in. Like here's the property address, here's the legal address, here's the closing date, here's where people sign. So I had a contract that was eight pages at the time that I had never read. Never read it, was not a real estate agent, no training whatsoever under my belt. None, none, none, none, none. And so when I did my first deal with this woman, Barbara, I had this sales contract. I said, okay, so we're gonna fill out this, we're gonna fill out this, you're gonna sign here, I'm gonna sign there, and we're gonna hug and handshake, and we're gonna do a deal. She moved out, I moved in, and I was fixing it up when I discovered that fixing up meant rehabbing. So I literally became the queen of Home Depot. Um back then, I think they still, I don't know if they still do the live classes anymore, but I know they have a million videos online. But I went to the live classes. I learned how to lay tile, I learned how to build kitchen cabinets. Ayla would be sleeping, and at night I'd be building cabinets. She'd be sleeping, I'd be making screens for the windows. And I learned to do all these things from the seat of my pants. So I didn't know anything about contracts. Now, nowadays, if I was going to do a contract with a homeowner, where they were going to move out, and I was going to move in and we're going to split the profit. I would use an equity sharing agreement. I would use a homeowner's agreement. I would use a sales contract, I would use a deed, I would use the land trust, and I would have that thing paperworked to death to protect both of us. Because the homeowners need protecting, because some investors are not as scrupulous, they're just unscrupulous. They just are after money, money, money, and they don't really care what they leave in the wake behind them. So I did not know anything about my paperwork. Now, my first deal, my homeowner, I have this contract, right? And I say, okay, so here's the contract. And I said, sign here and sign here and sign here, and I give it to her. And she said to me, Would you please explain the contract to me? I'm like, sure, I can explain the contract. So I've got this sales contract. I read the first line. Okay, this is your address, this is my name, this is your name, this is the legal description. And then she goes, No, I want you to explain the entire contract. The entire contract to me. So I start trying to go through, and as I'm reading it and I'm going to the next page and the next page and the next page, I'm reading the paragraph out loud, and I'm trying to explain it to her. But I don't know anything about contracts. I just remember that I was kind of winging it and doing a good job, and I got to the word estoppel. It's I burned in my brain forever. I got to the word estoppel, and I'm like, estoppel. So what did that mean? I'm like, and so I finally said, Barbara, listen, I have a confession to me. You're my first deal. I know I can help you. I know I've got people I can ask questions to. I know I can make this happen. I've actually never read this contract. I don't know what these paragraphs mean. I don't know what a stop will. I don't know what these words mean. Now you would have thought that woman would have run for the hills, but she still worked with me. She still worked. She's like, Dwan, it's okay. I feel like you're the person. I've been praying and praying. I feel like God sent you to me. You're the person. Let's go ahead and let's do this deal together. So, first thing was not having any education. Second thing was not understanding the paperwork. So, again, now if I was doing a deal with a homeowner, I'd have a sales contract to you know to purchase, I'd have a land trust, I'd have a deed, I'd have a homeowner's equity splitting, I'd have a homeowner's agreement, I'd have all these documents that protects them as well as protects me. But I didn't know. And for probably the first five deals, I still didn't understand the paperwork. I just used a sales contract, they signed it, I signed it, everybody signed it, and we just went on and did deals. So don't do that. Don't do that. Now the third thing that uh I did not know was scripts. I didn't know what to say. So I in my first like 100 doors, baby on the hip in the heat of the summer in South Florida. I'm knocking on the door and I'm saying, Hey, I see you're in foreclosure. I'll give you $500 and move out of your house. And people were like, no. And they were just shutting doors on me. And I thought, man, what is wrong with these people? Like, why is nobody wanting to work with me? I'm gonna help them. I know I can. I know I can do it. I'm no no doubt I can make this happen for them and for me. But I got a lot of doors slammed in my face until the woman said, I'll work with you. And I was like, hallelujah! I got a person that's gonna work with me. And I did not understand the scripts and things. So since then I've learned scripts. For example, if I went out today and I went door knocking, I would have a list right here of all the houses in foreclosure. And I would say, with my papers in my hand, I would say, Hi, my name is Dwan. I'm a full-time real estate investor. I specialize in helping folks like you solve their problems. So I'd like to know what I could do to help you. And then almost everyone says, I took care of it. And most investors go, okay, here's my business card. I took care of it. Here's my business card. No, they didn't take care of it. They just say that it's an automatic answer. I'll give you a good example. How many of you have gone into the mall? Everybody. How many of you have had a salesperson come up and say, Can I help you? And how many of you have said, No, I'm just looking, because that's what we all say. They go over and you go, Oh, I'm just looking. Then you find an item that you want, and you're like, Okay, where's that sales lady? I need help right now, and they're gone because you said, No, I'm just looking. And it's an automated response. Your mind is trained to say, No, I'm just looking. And they go, Okay, I'll be over there. And then they leave. And you find something, you're like, and then you track them down and you bring them back over because you actually did need help. So homeowners always say, almost always, will say, No, I took care of it. Now I know to say, Oh, okay, that's so great. What have you done to solve the problem? They'll say, Well, I'm doing a loan modification. Oh, I mean, a loan modification. That's so smart on your part. Loan modification is actually what I would recommend too. How many payments have you made? Is the bank signed the loan modification papers? Have you made the first payment? And then they'll say, Okay, well, I'm talking to the bank. I haven't actually done anything. And they'll tell you the truth, which is they don't know what they're doing. They haven't solved the issue. They just say, No, I took care of it, or no, you have the wrong house. If they say you have the wrong house, I'll just pull my paper out and go, okay, well, here's your name. So let me get your phone number so I can get your name off this list. Then they'll give me their phone number. I'll say, Okay, I got your number. I'm gonna try to get you off this list, but what are you doing? Have you done a forbearance? Have you done a loan modification? What do you what have you been doing? And they will always come around and say, I haven't done anything. So knowing the scripts is so important. And when I first first started doing short sales, I would just call the bank, you guys do short sales, here's my offer, let's make the deal work. And then if I was gonna wholesale the property to a rehabber, I'd say, okay, I'm wholesaling it for this much, and they'd go, What'd you pay? And I'd say, I paid this much, and they'd go, like, you can't make $10,000 on me, I'll give you this much, and they'd let me make five. So if you ever let a rehabber haggle you down from $10 or $20 or $30,000 to five, then forever till the end of time, that rehabber will only pay you $5,000 a house. That's why when I'm wholesaling, I'm getting it from a homeowner, I'm gonna sell it to a rehab or a landlord, and they say, What'd you pay for it? I always say now, what I paid for is not part of this equation. This is what I'm selling it for. Do you want to buy it at this price? Well, what'd you pay for it? I'm not gonna discuss what I paid for because what I paid for it doesn't make any difference to you whatsoever. And some people will insist, I'm not gonna buy it unless you tell me what you paid for. I say, okay, well, that's fine. I'm my side, my side is my business. So I'll just take you off my buyer's list. I'll just take you off my buyer's list, and then I won't call you for any more deals. I'm wait, wait, wait, you don't have to take me off your buyer's list. I don't, you don't have to be like that. So I never let them know what I'm paying. I mean, they'll see it at the closing, obviously. I never let them know what I'm paying because I don't want them to haggle me down from this price because this price is a good price. I wouldn't give it or offer it to them if it was not a good deal. So that's the second part is not knowing the scripts. And when you call the bank for a short sale, I say, hey, my name is Duane, I'm a full-time real estate investor. I do short sales for a living. I have a short sale ready for 123 Elm Street. I'd like to send you over the documents. Well, as soon as you give me the approval on my short sale, I can close in 30 days. Or to the homeowner again, hey, my name is Dwan. I'm a full-time real estate investor. I see you have a pending problem, not you'r e in foreclosure. Don't say the F-word. I have a pending problem with your property. I specialize in helping folks like you solve their problems. What could I do to be of service to you today? I don't care. Oh, you can you should care. What are you doing? A loan mod, four parents? Are you gonna deed it back? What are you doing? And I get the homeowners to talk to me. So learning my scripts is so important. You need scripts for homeowners, you need scripts for the banks, you need scripts for working with other investors that you might try to. Wholesale or flip or do a quick turn house with somebody else. You need scripts when you're working with contractors. You need scripts for everything. I had no script. I just would knock, baby, and say, hey, I see you in foreclosure. I give you $500 and move out of your house and I'll buy it from you and da-da-da-da. And they'd be like, no, door, no, door, no, door, more doors, more doors, more doors. So that doesn't work. So you need scripts. And I find that for new investors, one of the biggest things I find for new investors is for all of you like that have never done a deal, you and I ask, hey, what's your biggest fear? Most people will say, my biggest fear is I don't know what to say. So therefore, I don't know what to do. So therefore I'm afraid. So I'm not going to do anything. Listen, people, folks, friends, family, please don't let that be the reason that you don't do a deal because you don't know what to say. I will give you every single word that you will ever need to say to the homeowners, the banks, the rehabbers, the landlords, the title companies, everything. So not knowing the scripts was a really big thing for me. And it took me years. I mean, it took me honestly years. Probably for the first three or four years of my investing career. I still hadn't figured out like a good thing to say, what would make people happy? Uh, what would make them not think I'm just some crazy flake stand there with a baby knocking on doors? Like, I don't know, people don't know. So scripts are so important. Oh gosh, I just I can't tell you what difference scripts will make in your life. I can't ever express enough how much you need scripts. So now I did not have any education, started by the seat of my pants. I do not recommend. Do not recommend. Was good for me because if I knew everything I know now, I probably would have been scared. And you might think, well, Duan, I'm scared too. I've never done a deal. But you have me. You literally have me like right in your pocket to help you, answer your questions, work with you. I mean, if when you invest in one of my programs, it gives you every detail, everything to say, everything to do, every piece of paperwork, everything you possibly could use. And then you can ask me questions, and I'll answer your questions and I'll help you. Like, honestly, you have me in your back pocket. The next thing is I did not know how to close a deal. So when I had my first deal under contract, I was like, okay, I called these guys, like, okay, what do I do? Like you have to find a title company. Well, again, no experience. I was like, what's a title company? Title Company is a place that closes the deals. Okay, how do I find a title company? I didn't know. There were no real estate investing groups. There was no place for me to go to talk to other investors to find out what other investors were doing. So I had to figure it out. So I called all the title companies in the yellow pages. Now, some of you do not know. I showed my grandkids recently. I said, hey, this is the yellow pages. This is how we used to find people. They just flipped through. They're like, How do you use this, Mimi? So I showed them like how to use the yellow pages, and they were like, we can just Google it. So I did not know how to close my deals. I didn't know that the job of the title company was to search the title of the property, make sure the title was clear that I could buy it and either rehab it or live in it or wholesale it to somebody else. I did not know the job of a title company. They're the ones that will take the property, take your contract, they'll take the address, they'll take the legal address, and they'll run a search, going back to the beginning of the property to make sure you can pass clear title. So I did not know that either. So imagine this is probably my first five or six deals. I found one title company and I used them for a while. Finally, a real estate investing company opened up in South Florida over in Boca Raton. They're still there today, by the way. And I saw an ad in the classified section of the newspaper that said real estate investing group, first meeting, duh dah. And I went there thinking maybe I could find one other investor in South Florida, and there was 80 people there. I was like, there's 80 people here. All these people are investing in real estate. I can find everyone I need right now from this exact event. And then I noticed that it was almost all men. It was just like me and one other girl who I ended up working with for an entire decade. Sharon and I worked together for a decade. So when I get to the group and I see all these men, I was looking around. I'm like, do women not do this? Like, why aren't there any women here? And then I was like, a single mom. I was like, does single women not do this? I don't know. And there was one other girl. We start talking, we went into business together because two heads are better than one for sure. And we worked together for a decade because we did there was nobody to help us and teach us and train us, and we were both new. And I was able to fund that real estate meeting, was able to find an investor-friendly title company, an investor-friendly real estate agent. I was able to find contractors, mortgage companies, insurance companies. I was able to find all of the, it was just like a plethora of people. I was like, wow, I didn't know I needed 90% of those people. So I did not know how to close deals. And imagine I still made $22,000 on this first deal, 50 on the second, 12 on the third. So by that point, I was like, okay, I'm locking in. I'm gonna learn everything I can possibly learn. And so I started going to the RIA, then another RIA opened. I went to that one. And then by, I don't know, within a year, I opened my own. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna open my own RIA. I need people to come to me. I need to find these people. I don't know how to do it. I'm gonna open up a RIA group. I can organize meetings. I'm gonna have everybody come to me by opening up my own RIA group. And actually having my own RIA group really helped propel my career because there was only three, one in Miami and one in Boca, and I was in Palm Beach County. And that's really what kind of changed everything because I was like, I'm just gonna open it up. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put an ad in the paper. Because again, no Google. So we had to run ads in the classified section of the newspaper. Now, some of you might never have actually read a newspaper. If you're a millennial, you've probably never even read a newspaper or even held one in your hands, and certainly don't know what the classified section. But in the 90s, that was all that we had. So I figured out how to close deals, I figured out how to get some contractors, I figured out how to do all the repairs by going to Home Depot myself. I learned everything. I mean, I would I would lay tile, I would put up kitchen cabinets, I would put up ceiling fans, I learned how to do knockdown, painting, texturing, pressure washing, I pressure washed the pools and the roofs, and I learned all those things from Home Depot. I had a really big learning curve. And I don't want that for any of you. I think if I had not just been desperate to like raise my daughter and do this, I probably might have tapped out after the well, I wouldn't have because I made too much money to tap out. But I every single day I realized how much I don't know. Like every single day, I realized how much I don't know, which was terrifying. It was terrifying. And then my other fifth big mistake is I did not know how to inspect properties. Uh my I learned later in life when they started that TV show that was called Buried Alive. Remember, it was about the hoarders. I realized my first house, she was a hoarder. So after watching a few of those shows and learning about hoarders and learning how difficult it is for them to even throw away a piece of paper, I was stunned that this woman packed up every single solitary thing in her house, including all the trash, and she moved out. So it really must have been like a spectacularly hard thing for her to do because she was a hoarder. But I had never been inside a house of a hoarder. I walked in, I remember looking around and going like, my God, there's so much junk. There's nowhere to sit. There's nowhere to sit at all. The whole entire house. There was a space on the couch, which I sat in. And I thought, wow, this house, I've never I've never seen anything like this. But my first house was a hoarder house on top of it. So I was like, oh my gosh, I have a lot to learn. And then, like I said, I I thought I was gonna fix it up. So I put in some carpet, I put in some paint, I ordered custom-made blinds. In the 90s, everybody was using mauve, some carpet, some blinds, and I thought, okay, the kitchen appliances are yellow, the wash and dryer are green, the cabinets are old and ratty, they're falling off the walls. So Home Depot, cabinets, tile, putting in toilets, putting in sinks, putting in everything. Learned how to do all the stuff like that. It was fun, and I loved it. The thing is, I actually loved it. I was in there rehabbing away. Ayla was in the house with me. I got her uh some water paint colors, and you know, she was just little, like up. I I kept moving into houses until she started kindergarten. And when she started kindergarten, I stayed in the house I was in and rehabbed that one and stayed there. And then the next place is the house I'm at now. I had a house custom built, which I've had now for you know eons. So I did not know inspections. Didn't know how to inspect the house. So I would just walk through a house and go, okay, it needs updated bathroom, needs updated kitchen, needs new carpet, it needs this, it needs that. But let me tell you, I bought a house one time, and there were bugs flying everywhere, just bugs. And I remember thinking, well, I'm gonna have to put a tent. I had learned about putting tents over houses to kill all the bugs. I'm gonna have to tint the house. And I bought the house because it was really a nice house. It was big, it was really super cheap, but all these bugs, and I was just like, poof, I'm gonna have to tint this house. Well, you know what those bugs were? Termites. Now, being from Ohio, I did not know much about termites. In fact, I knew nothing about termites at all, except they eat wood. I didn't know they were in people's houses, I didn't know they ate up your kitchen cabinets and your walls and your wood and the trusses in your roof, those big giant roof beams. I didn't know they eat those. I knew nothing about termites. So the first fourth or fifth deal, the house was full of termites. So I called a tent company, they're gonna come and you know, put a big tent over the house and did all that. And I was like, okay, good, the bugs are gone. So I had a contractor who I had met by then. I said, Hey, listen, I need you to come and help me with this house. And they looked all over, they're like, Juan, this house is eaten up with termites. So I was like, what does that mean? And the trusses, they're the big giant beams in the roof. They go, the trusses are half eaten, the kitchen cabinets were eaten, the wood, everything was literally eaten up by bugs. Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs. So I had to have someone help me, and like where there was a beam that was half beamed by termites, we put a sister beam. So all the roof had sister beams, which is expensive. All the cabinets that looked fine had to be torn off the wall. They're eaten up with cabinets, everything had to be torn out of that house, like everything. I had to take the drywall off and put new beams behind the drywall, the beans behind the bio, everything was eaten up with termites. Now that deal I thought I was gonna make like 40 grand on. I made $2,600. That was it because of how much it cost to rehab it. I did not know how to properly inspect a house, which was really a bad thing to not know. I was lucky that the first hoarder house, the house had good bones. When they say good bones, you need good bones. I bought another house later on that had fire damage. I thought, oh, okay, the fire damage, and it started in the master bedroom. So the insurance company had fixed the master bedroom, put a new electrical. They did all that, but I did not know this. When your house is on fire and the fire department comes and they spray all that water, they spray the whole house. Do you know what's worse than fire damage? Is water damage. Do you want to know why? Because all that drywall gets soaked with water and it becomes like powder. And I was in this house, and it's the weirdest thing because I never do this. And I was looking at the house and I and I leaned against the wall. I just and I never, I never do that. I leaned against the wall like this to like really study this house. And when I leaned against the drywall, because it had been soaked with water and dried, it was like powder. It was it was powder, and I just went poof, and I fell right through the wall, and I'm laying half in the next room and half in that room, just poof, right through the wall, down on the ground, covered in dust. I was like, what is all of this? So now I have to get a hold of my contractor buddy. He's like, Oh no, you got to replace all the drywall in the entire house because everything's wet. Everything was wet. Now, if I had known about fire damage, instead of just saying, Oh, it looks like the insurance company fixed the bathroom, they fixed the drywall, that looks fine. I would have known to have had the rest of the house inspected because it was dust. So I didn't know that. I bought a house one time that from the outside looking at the house, it had a two-car garage and the garage was like tilted off like this. I did not know about foundation issues. So the foundation for the house is like this. The garage, the whole garage was tilted like that. So the house is fine. There's a giant crack and the garage is off like this. So I was like, okay, well, how hard could that be to fix? Well, I didn't know about foundation issues, so I had to find a company that had jackhammer the garage up, pour all kinds of stuff. I mean, it uh it was a nightmare. I did not know about foundation issues. I did not know about mold. I bought a house that had a little bit of mold underneath the sinks, and it had some mold in one of the rooms because there had been a tiny little roof like this big that had just been leaking. They'd been catching it in buckets and it cost a bunch of mold in the house. So now I'm like, how do I get rid of mold? You can't just paint over it. It's mold. It's mold. So I remember in that house I had to call a mold remediation. And let me tell you something. Do you know how much mold remediation costs? I mean, that house almost killed me. So I did not know how to properly inspect houses. Now, the way I learned how to inspect houses was just by inspecting more houses. And then I started to see, like, okay, there's a crack on the floor, there's a crack down the ceiling, like a giant crack down the ceiling. That's the foundation. I started looking behind the bathroom cabinets, the laundry rooms, the kitchen sinks, like, okay, there's blocks up on the wall, that's mold. So I started learning all these things just by looking at more houses. If I had known how to do an inspection, if I had realized that bugs met termites, I probably would never ever have done that house because I had the money to do the rehab, thank God. And it was like 30, I was gonna make like, what did I say, 36,040 grand? I made $2,500. All that other money, thank God I had it, went into fixing all the termite damage. Ah, and then fire damage. Now I just I stay away. I'm like, no, if it's fire damage, I don't even want to deal with it. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't want it. But I did find two brothers, and all they did was fire damage. So I get a fire damage, I get it under contract, I'd sell it to them. That's all they did because that's what they specialized in. So I found some people that specialize in so I could sell fire damage houses to other people. So that worked out really good too. And then the mold, now I just I know two things. If it's just like something under the sink, you could probably put some kilts, LZ, you can put kilts on it and spray it and seal, you can seal the mold in behind like special types of paint and things, so it's not spreading throughout the house. But if it's got mold mold, you have to get it fixed because black mold can kill people. And you do not want to sell a house that's got black mold that kills somebody because you know what? You're gonna be in trouble. So those are my top like five things that I wished I had known before I started. And it probably took me a full year, I mean, an entire year of making many, many, many mistakes. I was just lucky the first three houses were really good clean, you know. I mean, I fixed them up, I did, you know, like I said, I did kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, tile, put in new vanities, new toilets, hung the ceiling fans, and I learned those things pretty much off the first house. So the first three had all that, but then like the next one was the termites, and like the next one was the fire damage, and then like the next two later was the foundation, and then the mold. And so during that first year or two, my learning curve was so big. My learning curve was so, so, so, so big. So when I see people say, Oh, Dwan, I watched a webinar, I took a bunch of notes, I watched another webinar, I took a bunch of notes, I watched a two-day workshop, I took a bunch of notes. I'm gonna take all this information with no knowledge and I'm gonna reinvent the wheel. I'm gonna invest on my own, and I'm gonna be successful. I tell people, listen, please, for the love of God, if you do nothing, please let someone train you and teach you and coach you and mentor you. And I am that person. I will make sure every deal you do has the right paperwork, the right inspections, the proper clothing, the right investor-friendly real estate agents. All the things are done. And then you don't have to go through all the trial and errors I went through. I mean, honestly, it's a miracle after the first five years, I still stayed in the business because I was always learning something new. And I everything I did, I'd write it down, I'd take pictures, I'd remember it. So I was able to then just move on to like 20 years, 25 years of just 100% great deals because I knew what to look for. But even on my first few houses, I was lucky that I was able to figure it out. Because if I hadn't, I would have probably gone out of business by my third or fourth house because the charm of my house almost like wiped me completely out. And if you ended up with a house like that for your first house, it could be every dollar you've ever saved that you're using to rehab this house, you'd be completely out of business. So having a trainer, a mentor, a coach, whatever you want to call it, I am a great trainer. I will never, never let you make mistakes, especially on your paperwork. Your paperwork is really the most important part of the entire deal. It's so important. And I just didn't know. So I hope that by listening to me today and listening to these giant five mistakes. I have so many more. I can honestly write an entire book about all the things I did wrong. But luckily, every time I did something, it was a one-time deal because I made notes and I made took pictures and I remember and remember those little automatic cameras, a little throways. You have to scroll my take pictures and then drop it off and get developed and then get it back. Yes. Older than Google, older than phones that have cameras on them. Older than Dirt. But my 35 years of experience will make you successful straight up out of the gate. That I can promise you. So don't do those things. Don't do those things. You have no reason to have a good education. You have no reason not to know how to paperwork. You have no reason not to know scripts. You have no reason not to know how to inspect a house. You have no reason to buy houses that have issues that are above what you can do. Okay? I mean, that trauma house was like the bane of my existence. But man, did I learn a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, which helped me later on in life. So I want you to become a real estate investor. I want you to be successful. I want you to work for yourself. I want you to be able to sit on your patio in the middle of the day and talk and help and teach and answer questions and train other people and build generational wealth and teach your kids and your grandkids. Like build that down, build that generational wealth down. You can be the top of the totem pole for generational wealth for your family if you'll follow me. I have a great program. It's at one two three fourclosures.com forward slash goldmine. One, two, three, f O R E C L O S U R E S dot com forward slash goldmine. You invest in that and I will invest in you. I will answer your questions. I will oversee your deals. I will let you ask. Me anything. I will look at your paperwork. I will make sure that you don't fail. My goal is to set you up for success because let me tell you something. Real estate investing is so much freedom. It's so much fun. You can make your own schedules. You can do what you want. You can take trips, you can write them off. You can travel the world with your family or your friends or whoever you want to travel the world with or by yourself, whatever you want to do, as long as you don't make any mistakes. That's the whole thing. It's just don't make a bunch of dumb mistakes. I made a bunch of dumb mistakes, but luckily, luckily, I survived them all. And that's why I'm here to teach you more things. So why don't you do me a favor? If you enjoyed the podcast today, I want you to leave a five-star review. I want you to subscribe to the podcast. I want you to write something that says like, Dwan is amazing, wonderful. Her tips are so great. Just do me that favor. If you had any fun at all today, do that. Okay. I'll be back next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letter. All right, everybody. Have a good week. Ciao.